The Role of Leadership in Supporting Employee Mental Health and Wellness

BY Jennifer Yoshikoshi | March 17, 2025

When an employee faces a health emergency and is hit with a $1,000 bill, it’s not just a physical wellness concern—it quickly becomes a financial one. They may have to dip into their emergency savings, leaving them unable to cover their bills. At that point, it can also start to affect their mental health.

Nate Nevas, head of benefits and health services at Pitney Bowes, says his company approached the benefits in terms of making all pillars of physical, financial and mental wellness equally strong for employees. 

During a panel discussion at From Day One’s Chicago benefits conference, Kim Quillen, business editor of the Chicago Tribune, led a discussion with company executives about how managers can provide employees with mental health and wellness support. 

Putting Mental Health at the Forefront

Leaders at Pitney Bowes started their commitment to mental wellness by holding conversations about mental health with efforts to destigmatize it within the company. By spreading the message of “it’s okay not to be okay,” it began hosting a series of internal webinars, workshops and providing resources on its website, said Nevas. 

Gillian Plummer, director of employee health and wellness at Quest Diagnostics says 35,000 employees at her company have taken advantage of health risk assessments. The top feedback they received was that employees are stressed about their jobs and finances. Quest Diagnostics applied this data to its vendor programs and adopted it into cultural changes within the company, says Plummer.

Panelists spoke about "Employee Mental Health and Wellness: How Managers Can Be Empowered"

Britt Barney, manager of client success at Northstar, says the company sought to create greater awareness of wellness for its employees by offering mental health sessions with vendors and holding health fairs onsite. These in person events allow employees to meet with people from vendors and understand their benefits.

Empowering managers to provide information to their employees about available benefits and to introduce them to someone that can further assist can be an effective way to support wellness. “There’s not enough time in the day for benefits people to be answering these questions, but to empower managers as that kind of first person that gets the information, I think is really important,” said Barney.

Employee Support Programs

Companies are approaching wellness as a team effort. Pitney Bowes has a program where employees serve as “wellness champions,” who stay updated on available resources to be able to assist others who have questions or need help, said Nevas.

Quest Diagnostics has a similar initiative with its company ambassadors. These employees take part in putting up informative flyers around work, talking to their peers and “empowering each other to live their best lives,” said Plummer.

The company also offers peer support groups, where staff across the country have been able to share their personal stories about wellness journeys like in weight loss. Plummer says Quest Diagnostics is focusing on taking a step back on being “corporate,” by pursuing a more humanistic feel in the work they do. For example, the company encourages walks during meetings to give space for people to back away from powerpoint presentations and clear their heads. 

Mérieux NutriSciences showcases the various benefits available in its monthly spotlight on benefits and programs, said Benefits Manager Talikia Kitchen. They inform employees about what benefits are free and how to access them. For the mental health spotlight, the company guides their employees through the Employee Assistance Program and helps them get in touch with wellness vendors. 

“With our spotlight program, we spotlight each benefit that we have and we let employees know it’s okay to use this. This is totally confidential. No one will find out. This is for you,” said Kitchen. “It’s to help to ease your mind and to let you know it’s okay to use your benefits.”

Kitchen recognizes that mental health is just one segment to multiple pillars of overall wellness.

A Manager’s Role in Promoting Wellness

While companies can provide an exuberant benefits program, if the work environment or company culture is not at the same level, these benefits go to waste, says Matt Jackson, general manager and vice president of Americas at Unmind. 

“The organization is responsible for creating the talent brand that attracts the right people to your company. They’re not responsible for the culture. The culture sits within the individual teams, and the managers are the stewards of that culture,” Jackson said.

Managers hold a lot of power and can impact employees’ mental health more than a significant other or therapist, Jackson says. This highlights the importance of training and equipping leaders to foster a supportive culture within the company. 

Taking a humanistic approach and understanding the struggles that people may be dealing with can be an effective way to approach wellness. Making the time to hold conversations and build rapport can open up more discussions about how employees are feeling, says Plummer. 

Even by noticing a change in behavior or reaction in employees and acknowledging it can foster a healthier environment where employees and managers can talk about things that may be negatively affecting them, says Kitchen. “We all sometimes have this crying moment because we’re alone and we’re by ourselves–but sometimes we need that person, even if it’s not asking or telling what’s going on, it’s just [having someone to listen],” she said. 

Jennifer Yoshikoshi is a local news and education reporter based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

(Photos by Tim Hiatt for From Day One)

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Covid put healthcare professionals’ skills to the ultimate test and redefined how entire health systems are organized. This was certainly true at Memorial Hermann Health System. Lori Knowles, SVP and CHRO at Memorial Hermann said it was a time of “rapid-fire decision-making and precision.” Knowles spoke during a fireside chat at From Day One’s Houston conference, interviewed by Jennifer Vardeman, Ph.D., Director and Associate Professor at the Jack J. Valenti School of Communication, University of Houston. “People were exhausted, but they came together for the community and for each other in ways that changed the fabric of the organization and what we believed we could do,” said Knowles.  As the biggest healthcare system in Texas with more than 34,000 employees, Memorial Hermann is moving toward becoming a skills-based organization, in which jobs and careers are remapped to focus on skills. The goal is to improve employee recruiting, retention, and quality of care.HR as a Problem-solverAs a fully integrated health system, Memorial Hermann encompasses everything from hospitals to outpatient care, physicians, urgent care centers, and health plans—all driven by its mission of community support. “We are non-profit. The only health system in Houston that is community-owned, so there are no shareholders. We actually give back to our community to the tune of about a half a billion dollars a year in community care,” Knowles said. Given the organization’s wide reach, Knowles wears many hats in her role, overseeing not only the usual HR tasks of total rewards, benefits, professional development, and employee relations, but also chaplaincy and “a centralized float pool” of 1,200 floating caregivers that fill in for regular employees when they are on leave.   But the fact that Knowles wears a lot of hats is not unusual to someone in HR. She shares that especially post-pandemic, organizations have been looking to HR for guidance on many major workplace issues, including mental health, wellness, resilience, burnout, and even rules on mask mandates. “That gives us an opportunity to prove that we are more than just the traditional functions of HR, but we are true contributors to the business who can think on our feet, and can problem solve in real time,” Knowles said.Skills-based Professional DevelopmentMany organizational obstacles can be solved through skill-building, either by hiring for certain aptitudes or developing them within existing employee rosters. After Covid, the healthcare industry was facing a crisis, including a nursing shortage and a lack of clarity for long-term career development as workers experienced burnout. 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Therefore, Knowles and her team must think ahead, providing employment models that are attractive to younger generations who may not want to spend their entire careers working difficult “bedside” roles, while also providing part-time flexible opportunities that might entice those of “retirement age” who still want to work, just not every day. The organization also provides a comprehensive benefits package that includes on-site personal counselors, elder care benefits, and retirement plans. To keep her employees of all different generations motivated, Knowles always goes back to the mission and value of the health system’s work. “What I try to do all the time is remind people that this is a noble profession. I’m famous for saying, ‘We’re not making peanut butter here, folks. 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Enhancing Workplace Culture by Prioritizing Growth and Engagement

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